


Mercy of the Living

by Loki_Friggasson



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Wallander (UK TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Loki Angst, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Feels, Loki Needs a Hug, M/M, Poor Loki, Sad Loki, Warning: Loki, this does not have a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Friggasson/pseuds/Loki_Friggasson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After countless centuries, he has found love and acceptance, and peace in the arms of another.  To lose that is to commit the unspeakable...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy of the Living

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my friend Alissa who, in the course of FB chatting, presented me with a singularly vivid, compelling, haunting and tragic mental image from which sprang this fic in its entirety. It has definitely kindled in both of us a powerful, renewed love of this 'ship - and also a determination to do all we can, for our own parts, to keep it alive and thriving....as well as to apparently do everything possible to break it with feels at any given opportunity. :)

#  Mercy of the Living 

Leaden grey skies and penetrating, drizzling rain, so oft interminable in this region of Midgard, at last ease to fine, light mist sweetened by spring and carrying salty, oceanic tang. The setting sun’s rays burn off veil of fog in a blaze of orange and scarlet. The very air seems fresh, washed clean. The streets of Ystad at last begin to quieten, no longer teeming with such ceaseless thronging of mindless-scurrying humanity, and Loki feels he can truly breathe again. It is quite pleasant here to him now – yes, pleasant, and a slow, genuine smile edges upon his mouth, subtly softens sharp and angular features. He lifts his face to crisp sunset skies limning street and building in liquid gold, and his expression speaks of contentment. For truly he **is** , and he at last understands the spreading warmth within his chest – the thrilling through his limbs and the strange, wonderful leaping of his heart. It is a happiness, even **peace** , almost foreign to him – lacking for millennia, craved so desperately because he had so long thought it impossible...and had been certain that there could be little joy in existence for one such as he, after all that he had wrought.

Truly, it proves that, even now, he can still be surprised... A gentle touch to the shoulder rouses him from unexpected reverie, fallen into easy stride crisp on misted pavement. Always is he aware of his surroundings, the inherent strangeness and potential threat in this realm – any who would prove troubling – and not only for his own sake. It simply seems to matter less at this moment. A hand smoothes down the front of the Midgardian shirt he wears – raw grey silk clinging to his skin, opened at the collar to expose his long, slender throat, and sleeves rolled up to bare graceful, white fingers. He reminiscently touches the black silk scarf – a gift worn with pride and appreciation, and with love – bordered with vivid green, edged in gold, loosely draped over his shoulders.

Another, more persistent press of warm flesh on his own, and he minutely slows his stride and looks over at Magnus, who has drawn alongside, and now firmly nudges him with a shoulder. No words are exchanged, and perhaps none need to be. Loki gazes into the human’s expressive eyes, which crinkle up, and the lips twitch until Magnus smiles upon him...gradual, beloved and precious to behold. Loki understands **everything** in that lush, supple mouth…in but the tiniest of winks, the sliding of hot skin on his own…as they walk in effortless unison through one of Ystad’s main streets.

This close, he glimpses the reddened marks upon Magnus’s collarbone and the side of his neck - indelible mark made by ardent, nipping teeth, demanding lips and seeking tongue. Faint flush of heat kindles in the human’s skin under his scrutiny, and Loki subtly smiles upon him, his features softening greatly. Altering his pace just enough, he strokes Magnus’s arm in passing caress and lets their fingers graze together, and feels a thrilling within his chest…the surging of something glad, something profound, filling him so that he can scarcely remember what it was to be empty, to have nothing…now that he has everything. **Before** no longer matters.

The skies have further dimmed to muted ruby tones, and the streets begin glowing with their artificial lighting which mutes the stars and the distant whorls of infinite worlds. As they walk, Loki is yet again minded to wonder what particular destination Magnus clearly has in mind - for in his own playful, cunning way, he holds that secret. Stubbornly refusing to speak on it, he had only smirked and winked. Loki had growled and called him a most infuriating mortal, and then Magnus had smiled playfully, maddeningly at him, and kissed him in the way which made a god hate time.

Most recently Magnus had taken him to a nearby small and cozy bookshop, crowded near floor to ceiling with tomes of all age, origin and subject matter. There, Loki had spent many hours, from morning’s first dawning to the closing of the shop at nightfall, curling up in a corner far from any other mortals and greedily sating his curiosity on subject from Shakespeare to Brontë, Plato and Kant to Descartes, philosophy and military history, art and science to volume of poetry, sonnet and trite commedia. He read them all, and remembered similar time spent in the libraries of Asgard. Unlike most, however, Magnus seemed actually to understand. Of course, Loki had at one point chanced across a volume detailing the Nordic myths - badly distorted, however, after having been relayed over centuries. He saw what they had writ of him - how **very** awry certain details had gone in the telling! - and huffed indignation at such human ignorance, though Magnus had found it humorous.

Again, Magnus gently jostles his shoulder, maintaining physical contact for longer this time, and Loki responds with equal touch and a purr of profound satisfaction rumbling in his throat. After centuries, he can say honestly, and without guile, that all is well with his world.

The sunset deepens, crimson and rose setting the sky afire, as they two walk in this companionable silence – saying little aloud, yet saying everything to each other in touch, glance and fleeting smile, so that Loki comes to enjoy even the journey, no matter the destination. They come to a crossing, about to proceed when Loki discerns an unknown human standing across the street – unmoving, staring at them – though he hardly concerns himself with such vagaries of human behaviour. Magnus’s arm brushes his, black-trouser-clad thigh grazing his own, and Loki fluidly steps off the curb in pace with him.

They have only begun when the dark-clad, as-yet-faceless stranger standing athwart their path steps forward. Initially Loki does not recognize the unusually halting, jerking nature of his movements. The human reaches for something concealed beneath long, flowing black coat; wan streetlight flashes upon cold metal, menacing glint from only metres away. Instant too late, Loki sees it – and recognizes it for what it truly is.

He sees the starburst flare of the weapon millisecond before hearing the explosive crack of its discharge, echoing as shout of thunder **_(he thinks inanely of Thor, and how thankful he is that his brother knows not where he has hidden, and made this new life for himself)_**...then suddenly there is a blur of movement racing in front of him, and a solid dark shape flings itself through his field of vision. Loki does not see what happens then – but he hears it. The dull, wet, meaty thud of the projectile striking soft human flesh. Penetrating it...going deep. He blinks at the spray of something wet and warm in his face, turning his vision scarlet.

The human body thrown in front of him falls limply before his eyes…crashes back down to the ground, sprawled at his feet, arms and legs akimbo. Uncomprehending, Loki stares down at it. At **Magnus**.

A hand spasms upon a small dark hole punched through his chest. Spreading crimson stain on a white shirt. Loki’s vision clouds with rage, and he experiences a deafening ringing in his ears; all else becomes muted, meaningless, as Magnus moans and gurgles and the pavement under him is awash with blood. Loki sees the infernal weapon – compact metal, so small to strike such lethal wound, and take away everything good and precious, and **his** – and then, he focusses upon the human wielding it. Assassin, agent, mercenary, rank common criminal – perhaps someone bears ill will against Magnus for his work in the Ystad police force…or perhaps it is only simple, awful random act instead - wholly senseless, someone seizing advantage simply because they are there, because they **can**. 

Magnus lies at his feet, twisted and broken. Loki sees that the assailant hesitates for only a moment, pausing seemingly to savour this, as wisp of acrid smoke wafts from the gun’s barrel. A snarl turns to rising scream in Loki’s chest as he sees the human again cocking the weapon - hears the sharp snap of the hammer drawn back. He retaliates suddenly, with vengeful fury and with violence. He cries out in anger, and a whip-crack flick of his wrist summons a long-bladed dagger honed to killing point. He slices it through the air in a blur of silver, and embeds it to the hilt in the human’s throat to pierce vocal chord and rend the carotid artery in spray of bright crimson. From suddenly limp and nerveless fingers, the gun clatters to the pavement, and Loki watches the human stagger back and vainly scrabble at the knife.

His sight runs thick and **red** with murder, vengeance, and the spattered blood of his lover, **_his reason entire, his everything, Magnus, no_** \- as he sees the human - common criminal, mercenary, agent, assassin, what matters it – yet still living, and clawing at the blade sunk into his throat. Loki sinks the next dagger hilt-deep between his eyes, and at last the murderer falls in boneless sprawl, twitching like brittle-shelled insect. Loki stands with fingers impulsively clenching and another knife summoned swiftly to his hand; he thinks only of retaliation, and of killing.

The haze of crimson bled into his vision is slow to recede, and he pants loudly, rapidly through gnashed teeth, his body trembling, overwrought. His footing slips on something slick, and at the edges of his tunnelled, scarcely-lucid awareness, he sees the trembling of a foot upon the ground, a hand clawing at a bloodsoaked chest. The terrifying, high-pitched roaring of raw fury in his ears at last subsides, and Loki fearfully dares to look down upon what he knows he will find. What he cannot endure... ** _don’t let it truly have happened, don’t let it be real, please..._** An anguished cry rends his throat as he stares, wide-eyed, face ashen, upon Magnus - who lies at his feet, crumpled on the pavement...blood pouring from the fatal bullet hole through his heart.

Loki slips in spreading, sticky pool and drops heavily to his knees. **_Please no, not like this, don’t you do this to me, don’t you–_** He utters a thin, broken scream and fumbles beside his lover. Magnus writhes in agony, one hand clutching at his ruined chest, and makes dreadful, pitiful noises. He struggles to form words, as something dark and wet leaks from his mouth, which Loki cannot endure hearing. He wishes this to be some cruel trick played upon him by the capricious Norns, or a delusion, or dread nightmare to wake from...yet it is real, it is truly happening, and Magnus is dying. Here, under his hands, **dying** , his face blanched and full of pain - shock, and **fear**. Magnus, who never trembles in doubt, never shies, is now afraid - and Loki, panic-stricken, knows not where to look or what to do. He places a hand on Magnus’s chest in vain attempt to staunch the flow, but as the man feebly thrashes beneath him, Loki begins to understand that the damage might be far too great...the bullet-wound through flesh and bone, irreparable, impossible.

His fingers probe the edges of the hole; such a small thing, yet so vast and terrible, that this should be what takes away his human lover... Loki, gathering the shuddering body in his arms, feels that hole as a gaping wound rent within his own breast. He cradles Magnus as gently as possible, but the man makes a terrible, choked sound of agony, and Loki cannot endure it. “You **fool** ,” Loki hisses distraught, eyes wild, rolling as he grabs hold of Magnus’s shoulders, shakes him. “What possessed you?! The weapon would not have harmed **me**!”

“Maybe...stupid...” Magnus thickly slurs, nearly insensible; Loki desperately clings to him, bends low his head to catch every struggling breath, every word choked with blood. The human spasms with agony under him, and Loki acutely feels it as his own…the bullet leaving total devastation in its wake, irreparable, catastrophic. “Wasn’t...thinking...but...I had to...to...” Blood foams between the lips he has known, plundered and loved so intimately. Magnus’s head lolls to one side, his breathing faltering, the rise and fall of his chest irregular and slowing. He gurgles thickly, wetly, and ichor spills from his mouth. “Didn’t...didn’t want you...get hurt... Can’t...lose you...”

Loki shakes with pleading and fury, nearly screaming aloud, **_do not go, don’t you dare, don’t you_** , over the lunacy and terrible unfairness of it all. Magnus could not risk losing **him** , and yet for this he should dive fearless and self-sacrificing into the bullet’s path, offering up his own life? For **this** , he was such noble fool? The utter pointlessness of it breaks something within Loki.

“I am not a thing worth saving!” Loki rages down at him in howl of fury and denial, his voice cracking high and thin. Fisting his hand in the ruined shirt, in fit of fevered desperation Loki repeatedly shakes Magnus’s shoulders as though to, by main dint of physical force, hold Magnus with him – keep him tethered to life. The god stares into the greying face and dimming eyes, senselessly railing out, **_you didn’t have to do this, never for me - why, you stupid mortal, you beautiful, noble idiot, why?!_** A wretched cry of unreasoning rage and frantic denial is driven from his stricken lips, and scalding tears salt his throat, burn his eyes and then spill unchecked down his face, mingling with blood in ghastly mess. “I am not worth your **life**!”

Magnus slowly, blearily blinks up at him, though seeming scarcely truly able to see, and offers a fading, thin smile stained red. Bloody fingers convulse, blindly seeking, twining with his own. “You’ve come...so far... You were...always...worth it…”

Blood pours from the wound, and it does not stop (why can’t he make it stop) as he reels, his eyes stricken, mouth contorted in guttural, animal howl. **_Please, Norns, please don’t do this to me - you’ve taken everything else from me, but not this, not him, I beg you!_**

Desperately tamping down on the wet, sucking wound, he calls upon all the power he has ever possessed; he has never specialized in the healing craft, but he must do **something** , anything. He summons haze of green-gold magick to knit mangled edge of flesh and repair severed blood vessel; pressing his hand upon the spreading stain like scarlet ink. Yet it is **not enough**...the lungs, compromised, and the chest cavity, filling with blood. All his talents have never been more pitiful, more useless; he is a god, yet not good enough, not strong enough. What use are his magicks if they prove not enough…if **he** is not enough?! If he cannot save the only one worth it?

Insanely, Loki thinks of Idunn’s golden apples in the warded groves - able to heal any injury, no matter how dire. The apples could have so easily mended shredded flesh and torn vessel, and healed the lungs yet drowning in blood. Impossible, however...too far beyond his reach. No help...no hope.

Loki does not realize he weeps until Magnus’s trembling fingers wipe away the tears, smearing blood on his cheek. His arms tremble, uncoordinated, as he cradles the dying man, lifting his lolling head and upper torso off the sodden ground. Loki tucks Magnus’s head under his chin, desperate to breathe the scent of him - chilled steel, salted ocean expanse, brisk tang of commingled lemon, musk and mint. All he will ever again see, or know, is naught but blood and death, and a thin, frail body going sickeningly limp, grey and cold in his arms.

Loki’s vision swims, his body shudders in fit of emotion he cannot control; anger bleeds through to blame, fuelled by anguish. It didn’t have to be this way - it wasn’t supposed to be... This cannot be part of the Norns’ fate for him, punishing Magnus for his crimes, it **cannot**...

It happens in the space between one wheezing breath and the next. Weakened body trembles, blood bubbles between Magnus’s lips; his chest rises, falls, and does not rise again...and Loki **feels** him go. That last, terrible exhalation, then the contorted body falls still, head lolls back, mouth agape...the light in his eyes goes out, and he simply ceases to be. The sudden, total absence of his lover...lack of breathing, heartbeat and soft, shifting life...empty of everything precious, everything loved.

Magnus dies in his arms, and Loki screams.

He nearly perforates his own eardrums, his voice shrill, maddened shriek through a throat reddened and raw. Feeling the abyssal emptiness opened up beneath his breast - that spot where Magnus had once dwelt, and where Loki had dared truly to feel, and to **love** \- he screams at shattering volume, with devastating intensity. It bursts from him in uncontrollable surge of elemental magick and fury, and explosively shatters all the glass-paned windows in every building in a four-block radius.

Retching, bent double over the twisted body, he screams, rages heartbreak, until he scarce has breath to sustain it...and then he begins sobbing uncontrollably. Magnus loved him - **loved him** \- and...and...

Trembling, Loki gathers Magnus - flopping like disjointed, broken doll - into his arms, and stares into the bluish lips, the dead eyes, void of all he’s ever known and loved. Never again will he move, smile, speak and laugh, never yield to him, never again love him. He weeps, terrible and wrenching sounds, body wracked by convulsive shuddering, as he huddles in a pool of blood in this damned scrap of a world which now means nothing - because the only thing of any real worth in it is gone.

He blindly clings to his lover’s empty shell; Magnus’s spirit has shaken loose, flown far beyond all finding, yet Loki, senselessly rocking back and forth, cannot bear to let him go. Magnus is gone where he cannot follow - perhaps to Valhalla, worthy warrior’s paradise...from which Loki is certain **he** is forever barred. Truly, Magnus will be lost to him then, forever beyond reach, no hope of reuniting in any afterlife...gone to his eternal reward, whilst Loki is damned to Hel - as perhaps he should be. No place in the golden halls for one such as he...

Loving hand passes over Magnus, though there is nothing left of him to respond, breathe or speak, or smile, kiss or touch. Unfailingly gentle, for all the look of death in his eyes and the mess of gore smeared upon his face, making of him ghastly sight, Loki opens his palm against cooled cheek and slender throat. Tender, yearning, he strokes the greying skin, gaping lips, and his thumb wipes away oozing of blood.

Awkwardly, Loki unfolds his limbs and slides an arm around Magnus’s shoulders, cradling his neck, taking greatest care in laying him back down on the pavement. Exquisitely slowly, Loki arranges his broken body almost as though he sleeps…but for the hole drilled through his chest, and the congealing blood on face and ashen skin. He heavily leans forward, moving his hands over vacant, staring eyes, stilled face, with the questing touch of a blind man yearning to commit this forever to his memory. He brushes curled tendrils back from Magnus’s forehead, and tenderly presses his lips to those of the dead man...palest shadow of all the kisses he’s ever known and loved, and now never will again. Tasting metal and blood, he whispers, unheard, his grief and sorrow - **_I am sorry, so sorry, please forgive me._**

Magnus will not return. And now...Loki has no choice. No other way left to him. What is now to come, he must do because he cannot stop…no. Not right. He does not want to stop...and there is nothing, no one left to stop him.

Haltingly he rises, moving laboured, immensely wearied. Staring at the splayed, broken body, seeing the bloody ground, at last he burns for vengeance…to retaliate until none are left before him. Let this wretched world lie in ruins under his boot, made to suffer as **he** now must. Oh, he slew the one **_(coward, wretch, murderer)_** who struck Magnus down, but it is not enough...not **nearly**. So long as Loki knows naught but pain, it will never be finished.

His form shimmers, the unneeded guise of Midgardian attire, now blood-sodden, at last melting away…replaced by layers of leather and gold armour, black and poison green, and his booted heel set hard upon the ground.

Clenching his fist in the air, he retrieves from pocket of magicked null-space the gold-plated scepter with a blue-white starfire gem glowing at its heart. So long hidden through shadow and spellwork, its scything blades glint with sinister purpose. It bears resemblance to the Tesseract-slaved scepter, thrumming with power, which the Chitauri had pressed into his hand, but this is all his own - forged from his own magicks, and hidden far within the roots of Yggdrasil. In all the time he had lain with Magnus, and loved him, and been loved by him, never once had he need of it, nor had he thought upon it. Until now.

With crazed, manic look in his eyes, Loki sweeps the scepter through the air, and gazes down upon Magnus’s corpse. Even in the deepening shadows, he is aware of the dead, sightless eyes finding him - following him, judging him. **_Don’t do this, you don’t have to do this,_** he imagines Magnus imploring - always knowing what he was thinking, knowing him better than any, **loving** him more than all.

**_I must - I have no choice - I shall do it for you,_** Loki voicelessly whispers back to the nonexistent shade of his mortal lover. 

His face is ravaged, sunken, and manic purpose of retaliation gleams in his eyes. Truly, he cares only to see this world burn; if he suffers, loses everything of meaning, so too must **they**.

Loki realizes these are the last moments he will ever have with Magnus, and yet it is **him** no longer. Soon enough this body shall be discovered, taken away and examined (violated)…burned for disposal, or left to rot in the damp earth. Gripping the scepter, Loki gazes into the blank eyes in which he no longer finds anything he can remember, recognize...or love.

Emergency sirens wail shrill in the distance, and Loki understands they have been summoned by others who may have heard gunshot and struggle…or, of course, the screaming. They draw near, as Loki holds Magnus’s eternally-unseeing gaze for the span of another heartbeat. **_Forgive me._** In haze of green and gold and vengeful magicks, he vanishes from the bloodstained street.

He shimmers cold, deadly reality first in some unremarkable little corner of Midgard, in a city he knows not - nor does he care - for they are all the same…full of swarming, small creatures who delude themselves they at all matter in the universe. They yet live, and walk this wretched realm, while the one who **should** , does not…and suddenly, as his heart shatters within his chest, and he moans his anguish through white lips, Loki can no longer suffer it. He steps from the shadows, and perhaps there is flicker of recognition upon the faces of some who stray too near. Regardless, he strikes swiftly, and brutally.

He kills all those unlucky enough to cross his path of vengeance, be they seeking to stop him, cowering witless, or else fleeing for safety. With wide eyes, white faces, they plead for their lives...yet Loki only laughs and **laughs** , shrill and pealing madness, as he slices off limbs, parts head from bodies, and with a swing of his scepter ensures that the streets run crimson. A wrist-flick of vicious magick burns all to cinder, and he laughs even harder only to keep from crying. In their hollow faces and empty, staring eyes he sees only his mortal lover - even now, perhaps locked away on some cold metal slab for dissection like so much raw meat.

Blood runs thick from the blade, imbibed by the metal so that it may never truly come clean. Still, he cannot, dares never, stop… From Asia, to Europe and the Americas, to corner of the realm he remembers though he’d harboured no desire to ever return, he kills and kills again - and keeps going. Burning eyes are set in a gaunt face; all the while his heart breaks, and so he dares not stop.

He knows his slaughter will not long go unnoticed or lacking retribution. Perhaps it will be Thor to find him, staving in his skull with one mighty blow from Mjolnir. Loki thinks that would, at this point, be a mercy…and far better than unending imprisonment which otherwise waits for him, fated to rot in foulest, dankest dungeon until the coming of Ragnarök. After long days of murder, sometimes he stares into the starry abyss, and feels his throat constrict, eyes burn - though the remnants of tears turn to frost on his cheeks.

He knows, of course, that Magnus would not want him to wreak such vengeful slaughter. He knows, because every night when he finds cave or forested grove in which to hide - staggering exhausted, the blood-dripping scepter falling from his hands - every night, when he stops moving, stops **everything** , for even but a moment...it is then that Magnus tells him so. Loki looks up at Midgard’s moon, veiled in fog - sees the vast array of constellations bearing no resemblance to any on Asgard - and most clearly hears Magnus speaking…low tones husky, throaty and sweet, in his ear. So easy to envision Magnus here again...warm, solid, frail and mortal...warm mouth crashing into his own, questing hot tongue and burning body, tangling limbs, melting the frost around his heart so he dared **feel** again…

He so easily imagines Magnus imploring him not to do this.. ** _.this isn’t the way, it won’t solve anything._** Loki claws at the ache of loss and grief in his chest, and knows it is true. Nothing will fix this. Yet he continues anyway. **_I have never had a choice; this is the only way for me._** He grins horror and lunacy, then sobs his gutting pain to the intangible, impossible shade of memory - or delusion. He begs only that Magnus should understand why… Seeking to drown in blood every street, city, and every last living thing straying doomed across his path, Loki cries into the vast, uncaring skies, **_I am doing this for you, all for you!_** But never is there an answer.

Wracked and exhausted beyond measure, he periodically dozes off, only to violently wake from throes of nightmare…then fitfully fall asleep again, restless and shuddering, never knowing a true moment’s rest nor peace.

He convinces himself he can almost feel Magnus with him…ghosted imprint lingering on his skin and lips. If he shuts his eyes he can almost believe it, and give in. But then his eyes must inevitably open, and bloodstained fingers close upon empty air, and he knows. Oh, he knows…

On other occasions he holds deluded conversation with Magnus, and can so perfectly see the regret...this sorrowful thing in his lover’s eyes, which sharpens to excruciation the knife-blade of agony and loss, until Loki would gladly claw out his own heart to end all feeling.

**_Please,_** Magnus tells him, with soft lips and sad, sad eyes.

**_I am sorry,_** Loki answers, and wishes he means it.

**_Please, stop. For me,_** he imagines he hears Magnus pleading.

**_I cannot,_** Loki tells him in turn, choking on dry, rattling sob. **_For you, I cannot._**

He imagines - or, in growing madness, hallucinates…his fingers carding through riotous curls...his hip slipped between supple thighs...his tongue running over salted, flushed flesh, savouring, possessing. Plump, bitten lips curving in a gentle smile, swollen with kisses...a long throat arched back in peal of unrestrained laughter...a beloved face, so much the mirror of his own. So **long** , that comfort and peace... In those weakest moments, Loki wishes only that they’d had more time..

Of course, time seems meaningless now, when he has an endless eternity - vast, empty, dark wasteland - of centuries stretching before him, and he will only ever be alone…for all the rest of his impossible, unfathomed eternity, **alone**...

After many days - weeks, even months - of slaughter and fruitless vengeance, carving relentless, bloody swath through the whole of the realm, Loki stands upon a barren, windswept mountain escarpment in meagre stretch of Midgardian territory whose name he has long since forgotten, letting the gusting wind blow through his hair, cool his burning eyes, dry the blood on his face and armour.

Suddenly he hears the distant, unmistakable pealing of thunder in the clear, crisp-starred sky; it rumbles again, more discernibly, and Loki allows a thin and twisted smile to ghost upon his hollowed features. He stares into the infinite, strangely inviting blackness of this desert night, set with a million million stars, whirlpool-whorl of galaxies and dimensions. Somewhere out there lies the vastness of Yggdrasil, and of Asgard **_(never truly his home)_** , and he understands now that he will never see it again.

Ominous, deepening rumble sounds like a nearing death knell, and his exposed skin has already begun to prickle, all the fine hairs on the nape of his neck bristling in awareness of the intensifying electrical field. Finally he feels the building charge, and he knows; yet he does not fear, nor will he hide from what comes for him now. He is so very **tired**...

Gazing into the deepening dark, Loki finally allows the scepter to slip unheeded from numbed, nerveless fingers. Its blades stained with blood a thousand times upon a thousand, it clatters noisily down the steep slope. Staring silently into the sky growling with muted thunder, spitting static charge, Loki waits for it to come…for an end. Strange, how he does not fear. If his dimmed, darkened husk of a heart feels anything but pain, rage and grief, it is a kind of strange relief that this is it, and he is done... **no more**. Let it end as it should have millennia ago; he can endure no more of this wretched existence.

Loki tilts back his head, watches the massing thunderheads which, of course, should otherwise not exist. The atmosphere on this windswept mountain crag is highly tense, strangely-charged, humming and fraught. Suddenly a drop of moisture strikes upturned face and dry, aching eyes, gaunt cheeks…and another raindrop, smelling of ozone and lightning. They are all the tears he can no longer shed, pouring down his face, as he looks up and waits.

This very moment, with those impossible stormclouds fast closing upon him, he suddenly sees Magnus - small, shy smile, bright eyes, mess of rampant curls fallen over his forehead - far more vividly, tangibly still. Standing right there, and so present, so near...if Loki but takes that step, and reaches out, then perhaps he will be. So much clearer this night, so much more **with** him, and Loki knows what it must mean. Finally, he is very nearly there…

He discerns the dark form rapidly growing larger, hurtling like a missile from the storm-seething skies. Thunder resonates, shaking the ground on which he stands. In those last moments, Loki truly feels Magnus with him. It is over now, and he is finished.

**_Wait for me,_** Loki implores him, as thunder growls nearer and lighting flares, strikes the outcrop at his feet. Dark shape of a man, billowing of a crimson cape, jagged forks of blue-white fire. **_I will be with you soon._**

Magnus smiles and embraces him.

Bolt of lightning strikes, and his world vanishes in blinding, supernova white.


End file.
